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The Only True Lords	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54573 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 11
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Chapter List
- 6
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Chapter Seven--The Changeover

            Draco stared as Professor Snape walked back into the Slytherin common room with the bubbling potion in his hands. He had thought it would take him longer than that to make a more effective Calming Draught, but perhaps he had underestimated how good the Professor was at Potions.

            It was more than that, though, Draco decided, after a cautious study of Professor Snape's face. He moved as though someone had been hurting him, a kind of movement Draco was really familiar with after being the Dark Lord's torturer. His hand on the potion shook once as Draco watched, then firmed.

            Did Potter do this to him?

            Professor Snape turned towards him as he had the thought, and his eyes narrowed. Draco flinched. Could he really Legilimize someone from across the room? Or maybe Draco's thought had just been that loud.

            "Listen to me carefully, Draco," Professor Snape whispered. "I have already informed Mr. Zabini. You are not to go around planning rebellion against our Lord and planning to kill him, you understand? Because the bond is maneuvering me into a position as Shield where I can feel such thoughts and will have to protect Potter. I do not enjoy such feelings. Do you understand me?"

            Draco had to ask, because it seemed so incredible. "Is that really what Blaise tried to do to Lord--Potter?" Damn it, he had wanted to speak Potter's last name without the title, but it really wasn't worth it, with the sharp jab in the back of his mind. "He tried to kill him?" He'd suspected that, but it was different having it confirmed.

            Professor Snape studied him, and then inclined his head. His irritation had stopped rising off him like steam, which Draco reckoned was a good thing. "He did. He was not intelligent enough to realize it was the bond that would retaliate to any attempt to kill off his Lord, not Potter. Potter is distressed by the effects." Professor Snape sneered the word. "I may have to fend off any future attempts by other vassals to manipulate him, or plot against him. I am not enthusiastic about the prospect of herding you like children for the rest of my life." Draco had seen the professor pinch his nose before, but never as strongly as he did then.

            Draco stood up straight. He didn't wish to be thought a useless child, and after listening to Pansy earlier, and the way Professor Snape had responded to her, he thought that Professor Snape might be seeing him that way. "I won't give you cause to worry about me," he said, as strongly and calmly as he could. "Don't worry. No matter what. I can--I can live with this, and carry the burden. Maybe even help you."

            Professor Snape looked at him the way that someone would who doubted him. Draco almost snapped something, but held it back. That was what a child would do, not an adult.

            He held in the words, and Professor Snape ended up nodding and then saying, "Perhaps you can, at that. I do not yet know if all of us will hold different positions in the bond, or perhaps they will change depending on the circumstances. If they change..." He contemplated Draco in silence so sheer that Draco found himself holding his breath, and then said, "I do not expect your resolution to last. But in the meantime, you may visit Mr. Zabini in the hospital wing. There is a Healer that has been speaking with him."

            "Healer Kislik?" Draco asked.

            Professor Snape made a dismissive gesture with one sleeve. "I do not recall. But she has been filling Mr. Zabini's head with dangerous nonsense about a vassal's right to rebel." Draco winced a little as he felt a sharp twinge travel down his spine. That was the bond, but it felt as though it had come from the stem of his own brain. "I wish to know what she said to him, other than the nonsense she repeated to me. What she might have told him to do."

            Draco nodded, and watched as Professor Snape went up the stairs to the bedroom he shared--used to share with Greg and Blaise and Theo and Vince.

            Vince.

            Draco dug his fingernails into his palms. He could still see Vince burning if he closed his eyes and concentrated on it, but that was all the more reason not to fall victim to such weakness. He was not a child. He was not someone the professor would have to take care of, like Greg.

            But there was only one way to prove his independence and his usefulness, and oddly enough, it came from doing what he was told.

            Draco chuckled grimly under his breath as he crossed the common room towards the door. If he had to do that, he could do that. Even Professor Snape had never despised what Draco could do when he put his mind to it, only the particular things Draco had done. He had succeeded in bringing Death Eaters into the school, hadn't he?

            The bond rang like bronze in the back of his mind, making Draco flinch. Probably because that action had hurt his Lord.

            But it meant he had the will and the determination, and although he really wanted to sit back and let someone take care of him, he knew what his father would say to such a thing, how Professor Snape would look. If he played his cards right, maybe he would have someone to take care of him later.

*

            "It's midnight?"

            Harry sat up in bed, pinching his own ears and trying to shake the feeling of cotton wool out of his head. He couldn't believe what Hermione had said, but then, he had felt this awake at this hour of the night before. Just more usually because he'd been excited about sneaking around after clues to Hogwarts's mysteries, not because he'd slept most of the day.

            Hermione, swinging her feet primly beside him, gave a little sniff. "Yes, it is. And I think you needed the sleep."

            Harry shut his mouth on the criticism he'd been about to make, and sat up more instead. "Is there any food here? I'm starving."

            "Right," Ron said, in an emphatic voice that said he recognized the need for food better than Hermione did, and handed over a metal tray laden with bangers, toast, small sandwiches, cheese, and other odd mixtures of lunch and breakfast foods. Harry didn't care. He grabbed the fork off the side and started eating.

            "We should talk about what Healer Kislik suggested," Hermione said. Harry saw that she had a rustling pile of newspapers under one arm, and a book beside her on the bed. She was looking at him with burning eyes, the way she always did when she had a new investigation to start.

            Ron laid a calming hand on Hermione's arm. "Let Harry eat. You found out enough about her to show she wasn't what we thought she was, right?"

            Hermione nodded and dug into the papers while Harry dug into his bangers. Harry kept his head down and rubbed his right arm cautiously against the side of the tray. At the moment, there was no feeling in the shield mark, not pain and not fire. He hoped that was a sign that Zabini was still okay, and that no other Slytherins needed him right now.

            "I found that there were two cases of weakened Lordship bonds in the last ten years," said Hermione, and read aloud from an article that looked like it was on the front page, although Harry couldn't see it that well from where he was sitting. "'This publication regrets to report the death of Jacinta Moore, commonly known as Lady Moore, on the 10th of September. Lady Moore's vassals attended the funeral.'"

            Harry blinked. "All right. So what?"

            Hermione stared levelly at him. "So she was fifty, which is no age at all for a witch, and her health was great. She'd been working with a program called the Freedom Fighters, though. It seems they were a mix of Healers and Potions masters and former Aurors. They wanted to weaken Lordship bonds and set the vassals free."

            "What did she die of?" Harry said, and then quickly stuffed his mouth full as Ron shook his head at Harry, admonishing him for starting an argument with Hermione this way.

            "A heart attack," Hermione said.

            Harry shrugged. "Well, I'll watch out for any."

            Hermione leaned forwards. "This next article," she said, pulling out another Daily Prophet from beneath the first one and unfolding it with a sound like a gunshot, "says that she first had heart trouble when she was working with the Freedom Fighters. That was two years before her death. Never before that. What does that sound like to you?"

            "That someone killed her?" Ron offered, leaning to look at the paper over Hermione's shoulder. "Maybe one of them used a spell on her like the one Zabini tried to use on Harry." He shot Harry a disgusted look. "Zabini tried to kill you, and you're still defending him," he muttered. "You were more rational about Voldemort."

            "Voldemort made the choice to come after me and mark me," Harry snapped, since his mouth was free. "Zabini didn't choose to be marked."

            "I don't think it has anything to do with murder," Hermione said. "Unless you consider that a Healer can murder someone by giving them the wrong potion when they don't know someone is allergic to it, and can't be bothered to research enough to find out. I think it sounds like that. Lady Moore had been a Lady for twenty years. That was enough to change both her body and brain to accept the bond."

            "Then you shouldn't be worried about me, since I've been bonded for only a day and a half," Harry said, and stabbed his fork into a sandwich. Then he put down the fork and picked the sandwich up in his fingers, because Ron was shaking his head at him again, and angry at Hermione or not, there were right ways and wrong ways to eat a sandwich.

            "It says that they were working with her to teach her certain techniques to separate the part of her mind that considered her vassals hers off from the rest," Hermione said. "And that was when she first experienced heart trouble, when she mastered them."

            Harry put down his fork and raked his fingers through his hair. If he thought about it, he knew that his friends were only trying to help him.

            But Healer Kislik had said the same thing. And Harry hadn't known her for a long time, but he couldn't mistake that passion to help the Slytherins.

            Does she want to help you?

            The voice might have been Snape's, although Harry didn't think it was. He took a deep breath and turned to Hermione. "How could spells that affected the mind cause a heart attack?"

            Hermione peered directly at him. "Are you agreeing that that might be what happened?"

            Harry licked his lips and nodded. "All right, I am. But Healer Kislik didn't give me any names."

            "She did me." Hermione smiled smugly and unfolded the paper over her knees. "You have to understand, Harry. I do think that she wants to free people from Lordship bonds, and most of the time, I would agree with her. But that was before I did research on Lordship bonds." She shook her head, eyes dark and lip caught between her teeth. "It's not like house-elves, where only one person is affected. The Lord is affected, too. Or the Lady," she added prudently. "The bond sinks into you and changes you."

            "Then maybe the Healer is right and it's a disease," Harry countered at once. He could still hear Healer Kislik's voice shaking as she explained to him what he could do to section off the parts of his mind that would demand obedience and protection from his vassals. "We can cure it if we try hard enough."

            "If the cure kills you, what good is it?" Hermione closed her fingers ruthlessly in the sheets of his bed. "The other Lord whose name she gave me died, too. One day there was a story in the papers about how he was hoping to release his vassals soon and one of them had got away with rebelling against him, and the next day he was dead."

            Harry held out his hand. "What was his name?"

            "David Arland," Hermione said at once, and extended one set of papers towards him. Harry scanned the articles quickly. Yes, it looked exactly as Hermione had said it did. The paper carried a photograph of David Arland, an older wizard with a long grey beard that he wore tucked into his belt. The first article said, REVOLUTIONARY LORD SEEKING TO FREE VASSALS.

            And then there was the notice of his death, a few days later, although not on the front page, maybe because it wasn't so dramatic. A heart attack, just like the one that had killed Lady Moore.

            Harry laid the papers down and closed his eyes. "I don't want them," he whispered.

            "I know, mate." Ron put a hand on his shoulder.

            "But I don't want--" Harry shifted restlessly. It had sounded so seamless, so necessary and harmless, when Healer Kislik explained everything. And he didn't think she'd lied, not really. She knew enough about the subject to sound great and convincing.

            But maybe she convinced herself along with everyone else. And I don't want to be convinced and humored and treated along as though I was this little kid who knew nothing about anything. I want to make my own choices. If I have the Lordship bond, then I can still do it. I put up with the Dursleys and Voldemort for all those years.

            Harry had to shake his head, though. Those two situations, he'd always planned to escape. People had been encouraging him to believe he could defeat Voldemort almost the minute Harry learned about him, and Harry had known he could move away from the Dursleys when he was an adult, even before he knew he was a wizard. The Lordship bond might always be with him.

            So it went back to the discussion he'd had with Snape, about helping the Slytherins to achieve what they wanted and live under the bond. No miraculous solution. Harry was reluctant to let go of that possibility, but if it came down to who to trust, Hermione or Kislik, there was no contest.

            "Can you keep researching?" he asked Hermione, knowing his voice was heavy. "If there's something out there on breaking accidental bonds, I'd hate to miss it because I thought it was impossible and gave up looking."

            Hermione gave a quick nod, her hand pressed against his back. "I'll do everything I can, Harry. I just don't think Kislik's spells are the answer."

            Maybe a kind of answer. Harry tucked one chance into the back of his mind. The articles hadn't said that the Lord's and Lady's vassals died, just them. If it ever got to the point where Harry just couldn't do it anymore, and he wanted to see the Slytherins free...

            But his life seemed lighter to him because he had been so close to giving it away in the Forbidden Forest. Hermione would probably tell him to wait and think about it, and that was a good idea.

            "Let me finish this," he said, picking up his tray of food again, "and you can tell me what else has happened in the last few hours."

*

            Draco tensed a little as he knocked on the door of the Defense classroom. He'd had to watch his classmates cursed here throughout most of the year. But it also made sense as a sanctuary, he had to admit. The corridor was thick with Dark magic. Not a lot of people would be looking here.

            The door opened, and his mother's slender hand beckoned him in. Draco ducked inside quickly and heard the door shut, the Inviolate Charm springing up on it again, a charm that wouldn't even let anyone who had been outside the room when the spell was cast think of the door.

            The classroom had other charms shimmering around it, Draco saw when he had the chance to look. Far more than had been there the last time he saw his parents, early that morning. Delicate, arching webs of wards seemed to have turned the high walls to ice. The sole window in the classroom bore enough defensive hexes to dim the glass. And the chairs his parents had decided to use bore both conjured cushions and defenses so deep they might as well have been inherent to the wood.

            Draco nodded, understanding. The situation had gone so volatile in a matter of hours that his parents had no choice. They didn't know whether Aurors would arrest them or Lord--fine, Lord Potter would speak up for them, and until they had more information about which way to jump, they would rather protect themselves.

            "What news do you have?"

            Draco drew himself up. He might have someone else to report to now, but his father had been his first and youngest source of awe. Seated on a simple wooden chair, Lucius could still make it look like a throne.

            "I know that Zabini's in the hospital wing for rebelling against our Lord," he said. He had to drop his eyes to the floor, because the expression on his father's face when Draco spoke of Potter wasn't bearable. "And a Healer has tried to persuade both Zabini and Potter that they can break free of the bond."

            "Is there any merit in such stories?" It was his mother who asked, coming to stand behind Lucius with her hand on his shoulder. Draco looked closely at her and saw how white her face was, how her hand trembled. He couldn't despise her for that, though. He felt much the same way. He thought the only reason no one had noticed was that all the other Slytherins in his year had their own problems with the bond.

            Professor Snape might have noticed, though. And maybe Potter, if he ever paid attention to me.

            The burn of old resentment calmed and grounded Draco, and he was able to shake his head. "Professor Snape doesn't think so. Zabini was guarded with me, but I don't think he believes as much as he wants to. Professor Snape almost took his bollocks off for trying to get out of the bond."

            "Severus?" Lucius's eyebrows rose. "Interesting. If there was one person alive who did not want to serve under the Potter boy, I would imagine Severus would be the one."

            Draco drew in his breath in anger, and then shut his eyes and bowed his head between his arms. He could hear Narcissa's quick step in his direction, and the shuffle as she stopped. Draco knew Lucius would have caught her with a look, as effective as a touch.

            "What is it, my son?" Lucius's voice was as smooth and calm as moonlight.

            "It makes me angry when you speak of him that way," Draco mumbled, eyes on the floor. It was covered with a sharp sheen that Cleaning Charms left when applied to dust. Draco tried not to look at the trace of blood that had appeared when the Carrows tortured one of the Hufflepuff first-years months ago. "He's my Lord. I know that you despise him, but can you please not talk about him that way?"

            Silence. Draco flinched, knowing what would come next: the inevitable speech on loyalty to his family, how it was the highest good, how no Malfoy owed anything else to anyone. Draco had begun to think, during the last year, that that kind of clashed with the way his father bowed to the Dark Lord, but he had had no one to talk to about it, and every reason to pull together with his family during his terror.

            Then Lucius stood up from his chair and crossed the floor to stand in front of him. Draco took another deep breath and looked up. Lucius disliked challenges, but he disliked cowardice more. One should know exactly how one would react in any given situation, he had taught Draco, and that meant that Draco had to know his own strengths and refuse to give in to fear. And cowardice was the fear felt by those who did not know if they were equal to the challenges to come.

            "Well done," Lucius told him quietly. "That is not an aspect I had considered, and I should have. We will watch our words." Draco saw his mother's face over Lucius's shoulder, nodding, and relaxed with a loud sigh.

            "I don't know if he knows anything about the events of the last few hours," Draco said. "Professor Snape sent me to talk to Zabini because he thought it was possible that I could learn more about what the Healer had said to him. But he wouldn't talk to me." Draco frowned a little. Blaise had been so morose and stubborn that it was hard not to wonder exactly what Professor Snape had said to him.

            "So you have not seen your Lord today?" Narcissa asked warily.

            "I saw him when he came back from the Forest," Draco said. "It turns out that--that Zabini tried to kill him, and the bond responded, and Potter stopped it. Zabini was lucky not to die."

            Lucius's hand closed so hard on his shoulder that Draco stared at his father. Lucius's lips were pinched, and he shook his head a few times as though he didn't know what to say, but found the words at last.

            "I don't want you to challenge your Lord," he whispered. "We may be able to parlay this into political power if we play it right, but in the meantime, we cannot risk you. Do you understand?"

            Draco nodded, glad that he had locked his legs and wouldn't tremble in front of his father. Compulsion to stand aside from obstructing Potter because he was Draco's Lord or not, Draco hadn't looked forward to defining his own position between his identities as Malfoy and as vassal. He certainly hadn't thought his parents would make it this easy for him.

            "Oh!" He remembered suddenly, and looked up at his father. "Professor Snape said something about how he was becoming Lord Potter's Shield. That he can feel when someone else is rebelling against the bond and he's in charge of suppressing the rebellion. He said that the bond might put the rest of us in similar positions, but he's not sure yet. That's interesting, isn't it?" Draco couldn't remember hearing of anything like it before, but he had to admit that he hadn't paid that much attention to Lordship bonds before now. What the Dark Lord had with his followers was not the same thing, and it had seemed unlikely Draco would ever be involved in one.

            Lucius blinked, but it was his mother who answered, gliding forwards and putting her hands on both his shoulders. Draco smiled into her face. There was no one who loved him as she did, he knew.

            "Draco," Narcissa whispered. "Your Lord owes me a life-debt, for saving him in the Forest and lying to him that your Lord was dead." Draco shuddered a little, knowing full-well that his mother meant a different him than Draco did when she spoke. "Use this, and the life-debts you told me that you owe him, to get close to him. It is imperative that the bond give you a good position, that you not be relegated to the outskirts."

            "Narcissa..." Draco's father began.

            "No, Lucius." His mother did not often speak like that, but when she did, even Lucius fell silent. "This is your life, now," Narcissa told Draco, and shook him a little. "You must live with it, your request to us tells me that. Well, you will live with it. But you will do so in a way that allows you as much power and freedom as possible, do you understand?"

            With that, the light broke on Draco, and he thought he might understand, better than any of them--better than Professor Snape with his bitterness and hatred, than Pansy with her broken ambitions, than Greg with his disordered mind, than Blaise with his impotent anger--how to be strong under a Lordship bond.

            "Yes, Mother," he whispered fiercely. "You can count on me."



            And there was only warmth in his shield mark.

*

            bre95: Thank you!

            delia cerrano: Harry isn't under a spell; he was just really tired. But many other people agree that the Healer is not to be trusted.

            helga1967: Thank you!

            Sasunarufan13: Well, as you can see it, it was indeed suspicious. Though I would buy that books might be produced more slowly in the wizarding world, especially about a topic not a lot of people are interested in.

            Positions may shift in the bond if someone turns out to be better at fulfilling them than someone else. But it would take a lot for that to be the case.

            SP777: We'll have to see what positions the others take. But Draco's determined to have a high one after this chapter, at least.

            moodysavage: He may or may not tell Severus, but Hermione's talked him out of trying anything.

            unneeded: Maybe Severus can be better about things if other people quit being such idiots.
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The Only True Lords